EFFECT ON MECHANICAL AND FRACTURE PROPERTIES OF PARTICLE SIZE ON GLASS BEAD REINFORCED EPOXY COMPOSITES. NANO AND MICRO TOUGHENING MECHANISMS

ARIEL L. STOCCHI; ROMINA P. OLLIER; CELINA BERNAL; VERA A. ALVAREZ

Turin

Conferencia; Mechanics of Nano, Micro and Macro Composite Structures; 2012

Politecnico di Torino, Italy

Epoxy resins are extensively used as matrices in fiber composite materials in a wide range of applications as yacht construction, automotive and aerospace industries. These systems have good chemical resistance, thermal stability and mechanical strength. In addition, its low viscosity makes it very attractive for liquid composite molding techniques. However, epoxy matrices have low ductility and relatively poor fracture toughness, which is an undesiderable property that limits it use in several applications. For this reason epoxy toughening has been an interesting and challenging topic for several decades. Many approaches were done over the years to improve the fracture toughness. The addition of micro and nano reinforcements is one of the most commonly used. However there is no direct comparison on the literature of the effect of varying only the particle size of the same reinforcement on fracture properties. In this work, the deformation and fracture behavior of a commercial epoxy resin reinforced with glass spheres was investigated. The study focuses on the effect of the particle size on the fracture parameters. Two spherical glass particle size were used in order to compare the miro and nano toughening mechanisms. Particles of 40-70μ and 20-30nm (KISKER BIOTECH GmbH) were used. The aim of the work is to obtain a comparison only varying the reinforcement scale on fracture parameters and toughening mechanisms.